Time Machine Tales

This book contains a broad overview of time travel in science fiction, along with a detailed examination of the philosophical implications of time travel. The emphasis of this book is now on the philosophical and on science fiction, rather than on physics, as in the author's earlier books on the subject. In that spirit there are, for example, no Tech Notes filled with algebra, integrals, and differential equations, as there are in the first and second editions of TIME MACHINES. Writing about time travel is, today, a respectable business. It hasn’t always been so. After all, time travel, prima facie, appears to violate a fundamental law of nature; every effect has a cause, with the cause occurring before the effect. Time travel to the past, however, seems to allow, indeed to demand, backwards causation, with an effect (the time traveler emerging into the past as he exits from his time machine) occurring before its cause (the time traveler pushing the start button on his machine’s control panel to start his trip backward through time). Time Machine Tales includes new discussions of the advances by physicists and philosophers that have appeared since the publication of TIME MACHINES in 1999, examples of which are the chapters on time travel paradoxes. Those chapters have been brought up-to-date with the latest philosophical thinking on the paradoxes.

Paul Nahin was born in California, and did all of his schooling there (Brea-Olinda High 1958, Stanford BS 1962, Caltech MS 1963 and - as a Howard Hughes Staff Doctoral Fellow - UC/Irvine PhD 1972, with all degrees in electrical engineering). He has taught at Harvey Mudd College, the Naval Postgraduate School and the Universities of New Hampshire (where he is now emeritus professor of electrical engineering) and Virginia.

Prof. Nahin has published a couple of dozen short science fiction stories in ANALOG, OMNI, and TWILIGHT ZONE magazines, and has written 14 books on mathematics and physics. He has given invited talks on mathematics at Bowdoin College, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tennessee and Caltech, has appeared on National Public Radio's "Science Friday" show (discussing time travel) as well as on New Hampshire Public Radio's "The Front Porch" show (discussing imaginary numbers) and advised Boston's WGBH Public Television's "Nova" program on the script for their time travel episode. He gave the invited Sampson Lectures for 2011 in Mathematics at Bates College (Lewiston, Maine).

“This work is an indispensable study for scholars and fans of time-travel sf, and readers will gain a deeper insight into both the literary history of time travel and the science involved. Literature teachers will also find a plethora of ideas for texts to teach and very insightful discussion and writing prompts at the end of each chapter. Without a doubt, Time Travel Tales is a necessary read in the field of time-travel studies.” (James Hamby, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 45, 2018)

“Paul Nahin is THE authority on the intricate physics of time travel, paradoxes and all. He makes the field as clear as it can be.” (Gregory Benford, author of “Timescape”)